Step back 200m years into the Jurassic dark

Families will be invited to travel back in time to the age of the dinosaur in a new show at the Natural History Museum this summer.

The show is the first new exhibition using the museum's extensive palaeontology - or prehistoric life - collections for five years. It will showcase more than 60 specimens such as ammonite and dragonfly fossils and the tail spike of a stegosaurus.

But the journey will also be dramatically brought to life with specimens that visitors will be allowed to handle and animatronic models such as a life-size camarasaurus eating from the treetops, a protoceratops defending its nest and the scary tarbosaurus.

It starts in the dark marine world of fish, sharks and other creatures of the Jurassic period which began 200 million years ago before moving to land and Jurassic forests and deserts of the Cretaceous period that followed.

Paul Barrett, one of the museum's dinosaur experts, said the last two exhibitions focused on feeding habits and the tyrannosaurus rex. This was a broader show that also included information about the animals and plants that lived alongside dinosaurs.

"It places them in an ecological context, showing dinosaurs in their environment," said Mr Barrett.

A series of talks accompany the show including one on fossilised prehistoric eggs and plant specimens and another on the tuatara of New Zealand, an endangered reptile which is the last remaining member of a group of creatures from the time of the dinosaurs.

Age of the Dinosaur opens on Friday and runs until September 4. www.nhm.ac.uk/dinosaur-age